From Lebanon to Halloween in Order Categorical

Given the newest war in the Holy Land, it is only appropriate to start our Graphical History Tour of my October cartoons with this reminder of the dangers of getting involved in the region.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers, Wis., Oct. 27, 1983

U.S. Marines were in Beirut in 1983 as part of a multinational peacekeeping force during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war. Those dates should give you a good idea of just how successful those "peacekeeping" efforts were.

On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber exploded a truck at the Marines' barracks near Beirut International Airport, killing 241 U.S. Marines, sailors, and soldiers. Another suicide bomber blew himself up at the barracks of the French paratroopers, killing another 58. This coordinated attack, for which Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility, was the second deadly attack on Western interests; a suicide bomber had killed 63 at the American embassy in April.

A joint American-French retaliatory strike against Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), believed to be training Hezbollah militants, was proposed; but it never came about because of doubts within the Reagan administration that Iran was behind the October 23 bombings. Instead, most of the U.S. peacekeeping force was moved offshore to transport ships. The following February, President Ronald Reagan authorized withdrawal of U.S. troops from the conflict.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 7, 1993

Ten years later, American lives were lost in another civil war, this time in Somalia. Bill Clinton had inherited Operation Restore Hope from the George H.W. Bush administration. U.S. troops were assisting the United Nations operation providing famine relief there when, on October 3, 1993, soldiers loyal to Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aideed shot down two U.S. Blackhawk helicopters.

Eighteen U.S. soldiers and hundreds Somalis were killed in the crash and ensuing battle. Video of Somali combatants dragging the naked bodies of slain U.S. servicemen through the streets shocked and revolted the nation.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 11, 1993

President Clinton pulled the U.S. forces out of the conflict zone four days later, and from the rest of Somalia the following March. America wanted nothing to do with a distant African nation where all of the warring factions were the bad guys.

The snake imagery in the earlier of these two cartoons echoes two famous cartoons by J.N. "Ding" Darling of a giant German serpent swallowing the world. Darling has not been the only cartoonist to liken war to a giant snake; Pat Oliphant drew at least one cartoon using snake images to represent U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and that country's shape inspired a number of other editorial cartoons.

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Lest today's post get too dark and depressing, let's skip ahead another ten years and sing us Picayune Butler, or something else that's funny.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2003

The U.S. was at war again in October of 2003, but the publications I was drawing for had other priorities. The Business Journal didn't happen to write any editorials about Afghanistan or Iraq that month, and I'd just drawn a cartoon a month earlier for Q Syndicate of religious zealots trying to enlist homophobia in the George W. Bush administration's strategery planning.

My cartoon about the fictional Rock Knuteson was a purely made-up scenario about closeted ball players. We now know of a few bi and gay athletes who were active in professional sports in 2003, but none of them were out to any but their closest friends at the time.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2013

And I couldn't let this post end without a Hallowe'en cartoon.

In 2012, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had vetoed a marriage equality bill passed by the state legislature and had called instead for a putting a constitutional amendment up for popular vote. The legislature failed to override the veto, but didn't pass the amendment measure, either.

Meanwhile, Garden State Equality v. Dow was making its way through the courts, and New Jersey Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson ruled that New Jersey "shall permit" same-sex couples to marry, effective October 21, 2013. The state Supreme Court unanimously denied Christie's appeal to delay implementation of Judge Jacobson's decision, and New Jersey's first same-sex nuptials were performed at the stroke of midnight.

Christie has a mixed record on LGBTQ+ issues, but a considerably better one than most Republicans. As governor, he favored civil unions for same-sex couples prior to legalization of marriage equality; he also signed a bill outlawing conversion therapy for minors. 

Now making a second run for the presidency, he spoke out against his party's bans on gender-affirming care, telling Brian Kilmeade on "Fox and Friends" this past June, "It's more of a parent’s decision than a governor's decision for goodness sakes, Brian. You really think that [Arkansas Governor] Sarah Huckabee Sanders should be making this decision for children in Arkansas?"

Q Toon: Pride 2023

I like to come up with an LGBTQIA+ Pride themed cartoon in time for monthly publications' June issues. This year, it just feels impossible to come up with anything upbeat, let alone funny.

Pride celebrations have been cancelled in several Florida communities this year due to the "hostile environment" created by Governor Ron DeSantis and his legislature's intentionally vague law criminalizing drag performances. 

Florida is by no means alone in promulgating DeSantis-style Cancel Culture. Event organizers have cancelled similar celebrations in Kansas, and organizers are concerned that a legislation in Tennessee may yet force them to cancel events in Memphis and Knoxville.

The onslaught of viciously anti-LGBTQ legislation being regurgitated from one red state to the next makes this a bleak Pride season. 

Who knew that we would come to miss the crass Pride Merch commercialism of 1992 to 2016?

Q Toon: Xed Out

On her first day on the job as Governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued an executive order banning the word "Latinx" from government documents.

The order, which she says was issued "to respect the Latino community," says that "ethnically insensitive and pejorative language," and the term Latinx specifically, "has no place" in government documents or employee titles. 

Latinx, by definition, is a gender-neutral alternative to Latina or Latino. 

"One can no more easily remove gender from Spanish and other romance languages than one can remove vowels and verbs from English," the order says.

RLY?

K

WTVR

As one of the former Press Secretaries for Donald Joffrey Trump, SHS presumably knows a thing or two about language, and I can't dispute that "Latinx" grates the ears of some Latinos and Latinas — much the same as they/them preferred pronouns do to some Anglx stick-in-the-muds.

Nouns have gender in Spanish, as do the adjectives modifying them, and there isn't a neuter option as there was in the language from which Spanish sprang.

I can imagine some pedant in the dawn of the Dark Ages grousing about the pueri hodie dropping all the neuter declensions from their lingo like a bunch of damn Ostrogoths. But such are the dynamics of language, especially when cultures meet and mingle.

Far be it from me to tell Hispanophones how their language should be run. Personally, I'd let the genderqueer niñxs keep "Latinx" and get rid of that ll thing. But that's just yx. 

Sinceramente tuyx,

Su amigx Pablx

Q Toon: Don't Mind the MAGAs

Last week, Jussie Smollett, an actor who portrays a gay singer on "Empire," reported being assaulted on a Chicago street by two masked men who spewed racist and antigay invective and a certain Trumpster slogan:

Chicago Police have not yet been able to locate the two attackers or to verify Mr. Smollett's story. The longer this investigation takes, the less likely any arrests seems to become — unless, of course, these cartoonish villains start bragging in some 4chan forum.

Mr. Trump's rhetoric during his presidential campaign included some notorious incitement to violence, so accounts of marauding MAGAlomaniacs cannot be discounted. They have threatened journalists with physical harm, mailed improvised explosive devices to journalists and politicians, and run over counter-protesters in Charlottesville.

Trump's bullying swagger attracts and encourages the "deplorables" Hillary Clinton warned us about. It wasn't a terribly politic thing for her to say, but the evidence seems to be bearing her out.

Q Toon: One Man In His Time

We now return you to our regular programming.

We don't have Showtime at our house, so I haven't seen Mr. Cohen's latest TV show; I've only read reports of how the shapeshifting chameleon has been able to con several right-wing and alt-right-wing politicians into saying and performing things that will be the wet dreams of the opposition research for their opponents in the next election.

Mr. Cohen's characters are way over the top, but are camouflaged among a cast of real-life characters who are way over the top themselves. From our Corrupt President to his venal minions, and the hordes of adoring, frenzied fans willing to accept any crackpot conspiracy theory as long as there isn't a whiff of truth in it, it's easy to see how Cohen's outrageous characters blend in virtually undetectably.

But as long as we're going to hell in a handbasket of deplorables, we might as well enjoy the ride.

You'll never guess whom Waldo is disguised as.

United Front Toon

The regularly scheduled cartoon will not be presented today in order to bring you this special #freepress United Front cartoon today.

New Rule #2: No recording devices will be allowed anywhere in the building.

New Rule #3: Hey, you out there on the White House lawn: we're sending the guy on the riding mower to circle around you even if it's snowing.